In Episode 5 of New Lines’ “Wider Angle” podcast, the guest is Batja Mesquita. One of the world’s top social psychologists joined Riada Asimovic Akyol for a conversation about different ways that people from different cultures express their emotions.

Mesquita explains how throughout 30 years of her career as an emotion researcher, she has come to realize the importance of social context for emotions and that “emotions may live ‘between’ people rather than ‘within.’” To better steer such variations in emotions across cultures, ethnic and racial groups, genders, socioeconomic groups or even family members with different experiences, Mesquita suggests a perspective of emotions that emphasizes the roles of social conditions and contexts, relationships and norms in acting between people.

Batja Mesquita speaks with scholarly authority about different aspects of this subject. She clarifies that learning new ways “to do emotion” in different cultures is possible but that it takes time and participation in social life. The research from Belgium and the United States on the phenomenon of “emotional acculturation,” which compared the emotions of bicultural individuals or immigrant groups with those of the majority respondents in various situations, showed that it takes on average three generations for minority groups to adjust their emotional patterns to that of the majority, “if that is a goal.” In those cases, Mesquita thinks that those individuals can still have “two emotional cultures.” The research on this subject of cultural “code switching” and emotions is ongoing.

Mesquita argues that saying that emotions are not universal is not tantamount to denying that people have feelings. In the podcast, she elaborates, “To the contrary, I would say, all people have feelings about the things that are important to them, in a way that is respected and that gains them position in their cultures and that they’ve learned in their cultures.”

Listen to or watch the conversation to understand the wider angle of how emotions depend on social context and why grappling with differences in emotions allows people to forge better connections in multicultural environments. 

Batja Mesquita is the author of “Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions.” “Wider Angle” is produced and hosted by Riada Asimovic Akyol.